Baseball: America’s favorite pastime. It’s also the nation’s first recognized professional sport. Baseball has had a professional league since 1871. It’s no surprise that so many enjoy playing. But what you may find surprising is that there is a simple key to boosting your performance on the diamond: changing the way you breathe.
How Nose Breathing Boosts Performance in Baseball
Whether your team is at bat or defending the bases, your nose can be your best-kept secret to gain an edge on the field. Here’s how nasal breathing works to boost your performance on the field.
Benefits of Nose Breathing While Playing Baseball
Boosted Endurance
A 9-inning game of baseball is a marathon, not a sprint. Therefore, baseball requires strong endurance to stay fresh for the duration of the game.
Whether you’re at the plate to bat or out on the field defending your position, both require the endurance to run fast and hard to get on base or catch the ball and make a play. Baseball agility drills aren’t the only thing that can help to give you an edge. Nasal breathing can.
@somnifix Here’s why you should ##nasalbreathe while ##running! ##YouShouldKnow ##isthisavailable ##airwayhealth ##fitness RP: @bbtpauldale
♬ Summer Days - Martin Garrix / Macklemore / Patrick Stump
When you feel sluggish or have a delayed reaction time, you won’t be able to make a play on the fly or kick it into high gear to run all the way to home. Thankfully, nasal breathing can help you run harder and faster for longer.
This is thanks to the Bohr effect, which allows you to respirate your cells with less oxygen in comparison to mouth breathing. Since you’ll need less oxygen, your heart rate will decrease and it will take less energy to power your cells. In turn, you can run harder for longer without any added effort.
And that’s not all. Nasal breathing can even help to improve your batting average.
Improve Batting Accuracy
The most important part about being up to bat at the plate? Your contact and follow-through. When you drive the bat through the ball, nasal breathing can help you power through the contact and breathe through the follow-through.
To do this, focus on breathing in and out through your nose while you’re on-deck. When you’re up to bat, begin to exhale from your nose as soon as the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand.
Exhale slowly and deeply. Continue to exhale as the bat makes contact with the ball. This will help you improve your power and accuracy. As you begin to run toward first base, focus on nasal breathing as you run.
There are also several benefits of nasal breathing once the game has ended.
Benefits of Nose Breathing During Rest
Reduce Hypertension and Stress
We live in a fast-paced world. That’s why it’s more important now than ever to make your mental health a priority. Believe it or not, nasal breathing can help to improve your mental health. This is because it places your body into a parasympathetic, relaxed state.
Therefore, nasal breathing can melt away the stress of everyday life. When you breathe through your nose, nitric oxide is produced and released. Nitric oxide helps to put the body into a relaxed state of bliss instead of our typical “fight or flight” state of anxiety.
This molecule reduces hypertension and stress, making it one of the most important molecules for ensuring improved health.
To unlock all of the benefits of nitric oxide on or off the field, try this breathing exercise.
Try This Nose Breathing Exercise in Or Out of The Dugout
To kick your nose into high gear, walk or run for one minute while breathing through your nose as you normally would. Next, exhale through the nose and then pinch it close while continuing to walk or run at the same pace as before.
When you feel a hunger for air, release your nose and breathe gently at half of the pressure that you regularly breathe at for ten to fifteen seconds. Then, return to your regular nasal breathing pace for thirty seconds.
Repeat this cycle up to ten times. Doing this exercise over time helps your body become more efficient when it comes to oxygenations, and helps make nasal breathing the default method of respiration.
Finally, if you want to take your nasal breathing game to the highest level, consider taping your mouth.
Take Your Baseball Performance to the Next Level with SomniFix
Babe Ruth once said to “never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” So why not pull out all the stops to make sure you continue to nasal breathe on the diamond?
SomniFix Strips adhere gently to your lips so that you can keep nasal breathing through your training sessions without ever having to give it a second thought. Just pop them on your lips and you’ll nasal breathe through every workout. Over time, nose breathing will become natural, but our Strips are a great way to train yourself.
On top of incorporating mouth tape into your training, use SomniFix Strips at night to improve the quality of your sleep and reduce snoring!
Add SomniFix Strips to your routine for a home run whether you’re running baseball agility drills or counting sheep.
